Twins Seven-Seven works in different
techniques such as painting, brush-painting, engraving, cardboard

relief and fabric painting. “One
remarkable result of the Oshogbo experiment was the rapidity with which

the young artists found their own style.
Seven-Seven threw away the wide brushes he had been

working with and began to draw with the
flexible quills of the palm leaves.

African
Studies Program

Morgan
State University

Visual
Arts Program will
host Lectures
and Workshops

By

Prince
Twins Seven Seven

Residency
October 1 - 31, 2003

* * * * *

Seven Twins

By Petra Stegmann

The Nigerian Twins Seven-Seven, one of his
country’s most prominent artists, is an all-around talent. Not
only is he a painter, he is a bandleader, dancer, actor,
entrepreneur, politician and doctor. The pseudonym of Twins
Seven-Seven, who was born as Prince Taiwo Olaniyi Wyewale-Toyeje
Oyekale Osuntoki, alludes to the tragic fact that he is the only
surviving child of seven sets of twins born to his mother. His
artistic career began with the informal workshops which Ulli and
Georgina Beier held in the sixties in Oshogbo, the center of the
Oshogbo Artists’ Group, a diverse scene of young artists who
were largely ignored by Nigeria’s academically trained artists.
Exhibitions in Prague and Munich brought Twins Seven-Seven
international recognition in the mid-1960s.

Twins Seven-Seven’s works reflect a highly personal
cosmology and mythology, creating an independent universe full of
people, animals, gods and plants, inspired by the Yoruba culture
(one of the largest ethnic groups south of the Sahara). Later
works explore social and political issues as well and take a
critical look at Nigerian politics. His works are free from all
rules of form, perspective and proportion. Playful and daring,
they vibrate with an abundance of motifs and ornaments.

Twins Seven-Seven works in different techniques such as
painting, brush-painting, engraving, cardboard relief and fabric
painting. “One remarkable result of the Oshogbo experiment was
the rapidity with which the young artists found their own style.
Seven-Seven threw away the wide brushes he had been working with
and began to draw with the flexible quills of the palm leaves. He
begins in the upper left-hand corner and then works his way down,
filling the space with dense, ingenious patterns,” Ulli Beier
describes Seven-Seven’s style and working methods, which are
often imitated in contemporary Nigerian art.

The gouache “Devil’s Dog” was influenced by the literature
of Amos Tutuola. This diabolical dog is an enormous monster with
six legs and a human space, almost bursting the bounds of the
painting. The being’s body is drawn in profile, while its head
is turned to gaze behind it – as if in search of possible
pursuers. Its body is covered with large scales, and the coiled
tail ends in a snake’s head. The creature is surrounded by a
number of smaller fantasy beings, snakes, humanoid figures and
ornaments. Almost every line is embellished with more ornaments;
not a single spot of the picture is left uncovered.

The artist also takes scenes of everyday life in Oshogbo as his
motifs. The acrylic “The Fruit Sellers”, from 1988, shows two
women carrying baskets full of fruit. One woman balances her
basket on her head, while her companion carries the burden in
front of her. The two women take up the entire rectangular format
of the picture. In contrast to the fine lines in his drawings,
here the artist works with luminous colors and vivid patterns.
With their outsized eyes and the strong lines modeling the bodies,
the figures are highly stylized.

In the etching “Lagos in the Palm of an Architect” (1984),
Twins Seven-Seven thematizes the rapid development of the
megalopolis, Africa’s fastest-growing city. A claw-like hand
with only four visible fingers reaches into the picture from the
right, taking up its entire lower half. The hand holds several
small round houses of the kind found in African villages and a
larger rectangular object, a high-rise. Here the architect’s
hand seems mighty as a god’s. Houses appear and disappear at his
whim – the people whose lives are radically changed by the
activities of this hand are nowhere to be seen; they are given no
part in these processes. In this picture Seven-Seven mirrors one
aspect of African reality, translating it into pithy, easily
understandable imagery.

This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London

In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy